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CAMP KEEP THE QUIET (VERSION)

THE PANOPLY ACADEMY HAS NOTHING ON YOU

SOMETHING STEEPED, SOMETHING STOWED

SIX VOLTS UNTIL GOOD NEWS

WHERE ALL THE AIR GOES

THE DANCE OF THE PRECISELY STRICKEN

The Panoply Academy formed in mid-1996. All its members came from bands who may someday end up on a Bloodstains Across the Midwest comp -- if anyone is able to uncover those lost records. WHAT WE DEFEND is the six-song follow up to their debut full-length RAH! The EP is a rock album, part MARGIN WALKER and part FLOWERS OF ROMANCE. Call it damaged art-punk, we've used that term before. Past musical comparisons to MX-80 and Smart Went Crazy have fallen short. Instead a holy, distinct and disjointed sound carries Panoply. Singer Darin Glenn's yodel and Marty Sprowles' neurotic guitar playing cut across WHAT WE DEFEND. Keyboardist Bekkah Walker's minimal, Monet-styled samples and beeps follow the ways of Pan Sonic, underlining the taut songs; whereas Nick Q's bass and Ryan Hicks' savage drumming grounds it all into a tight, sweaty basement uber-funk. And Panoply has enough spazz to satisfy the Gravity geeks and angular guitar for all the high-water pants in D.C.